ISLAMABAD: Ten lawmakers from former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, who the PTI says were arrested from inside the parliament building earlier this week, were produced at the National Assembly on Thursday on the orders of the Speaker, the party said. 
Pakistani police arrested several PTI MPs late on Monday night and early on Tuesday after the party held a rally in the capital on Sunday to demand the release of ex-PM Khan, who has been in prison since August last year, facing a slew of cases. The PTI said a number of the MPs were detained while they were inside the parliament building. The National Assembly speaker on Tuesday opened an inquiry into the arrests, citing that under Pakistani law, legislators cannot be detained from within the precincts of the parliament without the speaker’s permission.
According to the National Assembly Secretariat, production orders were issued on Wednesday for PTI party MPs Sher Afzal Khan, Malik Muhammad Aamir Dogar, Muhammad Ahmad Chattha, Makhdoom Zain Hussain Qureshi, Waqas Akram, Zubair Khan Wazir, Awais Haider Jakhar, Syed Shah Ahad Ali Shah, Nasim Ali Shah, and Yousaf Khan. 
Upon arriving at the Parliament House, all the lawmakers were handed over to the sergeant-at-arms.
“Slogans of former prime minister Imran Khan chanted on the arrival of PTI members at the Parliament House,” the PTI party said on Thursday in a social media post on X. 

Videos shared by the PTI with journalists showed the arrested lawmakers arriving at the National Assembly in a white van surrounded by police personnel amid pro-Khan sloganeering. One video showed Marwat meeting his son while one had Dogar speaking against what he described as the “fascism” of the incumbent government. Qureshi told reporters none of the arrested PTI leaders were tortured while in custody. 
On Wednesday, the PTI had announced its lawmakers would boycott parliament sessions until it was “satisfied” with the result of an investigation into the arrests.
Separately, a two-member bench of the Islamabad High Court bench suspended the physical remand of the arrested PTI party lawmakers till the next hearing, which is scheduled for tomorrow, Friday. An anti-terrorism court on Tuesday allowed the eight-day physical remand of the politicians. 
Following uproar over the arrests, the National Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on Wednesday to constitute an 18-member committee to resolve issues related to the House. The PTI is represented in the body by its chairman, Gohar Ali Khan.
SUNDAY RALLY
Sunday’s PTI rally was mostly peaceful, but there were clashes between police and some PTI supporters en route to the rally venue, in which one police officer was injured. The rally also went on longer than the 7pm deadline given by the district administration, a violation under the recently passed Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Act, 2024, which allows authorities to set time limits for public gatherings and designate special areas to hold them. 
The Islamabad administration had allowed the PTI to hold Sunday’s rally from 4pm till 7pm but the gathering went on until nearly 11pm. Police have said the PTI MPs were detained over violations of the new law.
On Wednesday, Information Minister Ataullah Tarar rejected PTI party claims that the lawmakers were arrested from inside the National Assembly building. 
The PTI says it has faced an over year-long crackdown since protesters allegedly linked to the party attacked and damaged government and military installations on May 9, 2023, after Khan’s brief arrest that day in a land graft case. Hundreds of PTI followers and leaders were arrested following the riots and many remain behind bars as they await trial. The military, which says Khan and his party were behind the attacks, has also initiated army court trials of at least 103 people accused of involvement in the violence.
The party says it was not allowed to campaign freely ahead of the Feb. 9 general election, a vote marred by a mobile Internet shutdown on election day and unusually delayed results, leading to accusations that it was rigged and drawing concern from rights groups and foreign governments.
The PTI says it won the most seats, but its mandate was “stolen” by PM Shebaz Sharif’s coalition government which formed the government with the backing of the all-powerful military. Both deny the claim.
Khan, jailed since last August, was ousted from the PM’s office in 2022 in a parliamentary vote of no confidence after what is widely believed to be a falling out with Pakistan’s powerful military, which denies being involved in politics. Since his removal, Khan and his party have waged an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the military and now the PTI is aiming to mobilize the public through public rallies to call for their leader’s release from jail in “politically motivated” cases. 
The ex-PM faces a range of legal charges and was convicted in four cases since he was first taken into custody, all of which have been either suspended or overturned by the courts. He remains in jail, however, on new charges brought by Pakistan’s national accountability watchdog regarding the illegal sale of gifts from a state repository while Khan was prime minister from 2018 to 2022.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: A sit-in by police in the Lakki Marwat district of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province against a surge in militancy and the targeted assassinations of officers entered its fourth day on Thursday, with seven people killed in attacks in the region in the last 24 hours, police said.
Security officials, policemen and polio vaccinators were among the seven fatalities. In a latest attack in Bannu, a southern district in KP, unidentified gunmen opened fire on police guards escorting a polio vaccination team on Thursday morning, killing a policeman. 
Pakistan has seen a number of militant attacks in recent months, with most of them taking place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where religiously motivated groups like the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) have stepped up assaults, daily targeting security forces convoys and check posts, and carrying out targeted killings and kidnappings of security and government officials.
At least 77 policemen have been killed in ambushes and target killings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2024, according to police figures. 
“Unfortunately, another brave colleague, police officer Noor Alam Jan, lost his life in a targeted attack by unidentified gunmen when he was guarding a polio team this [Thursday] morning in Domail,” Matiullah Khan, a police officer with Bannu police, told Arab News. 
The killing comes a day after police in the Bajaur tribal district announced a boycott of polio security duties following the killing of a cop by unknown gunmen. 
Last week, 13 people were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted a police vehicle escorting an anti-polio team in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district, officials said. 
On Tuesday this week, Bajaur police said a security official was killed and four were injured when their vehicle was hit by a planted bomb near the Niamat Khan village of the volatile district.
On Thursday, police officer Zabihullah Wazir said two laborers and a Frontier Corps paramilitary soldier were killed during an exchange of gunfire between security officials and suspected militants in Angoor Adda, an area bordering Afghanistan in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district.
The Pakistan army has a heavy presence in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, where it has been battling militants from the Al-Qaeda, Pakistani Taliban and other groups for nearly two decades.
There have been protests in several districts of KP since July, when Pakistan’s cabinet announced that a new military operation would be launched amid a surge in terror attacks across the country. People in the northwestern region have rejected plans for an armed operation and demand that civilian agencies like the provincial police and the counter-terrorism department be better equipped.
PROTESTS GROW
Police in Lakki Marwat have been staging a sit-in for the last four days after unidentified gunmen attacked a police van in the district, killing an officer. Two brothers of a serving police man in the district were separately gunned down. 
Police and local elders in Lakki Marwat are demanding the military’s complete withdrawal from KP and the transfer of power to civilian law enforcers to restore peace and stability in the region.
Lakki Marwat police spokesman Shahid Marwat told Arab News the protests had “gained momentum” on Thursday, with more and more people and policemen joining the protest camp and loudspeaker announcements asking businesses to remain shut. 
Marwat said police officials from other districts like Bannu were also arriving in Lakki Marwat to join the sit-in in solidarity with their colleagues. 
“Today, protesters closed down all main arteries linking Peshawar-Karachi and Lakki Marwat-Punjab on the Indus Highway,” he said. 
The sit-in by policemen has also been joined by representatives of civil society and political parties as well as tribal elders and members of the public, the spokesman added. 
KP government Spokesman Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif did not return phone calls and text messages on Thursday inquiring about the government’s plans to deal with the protests in Lakki Marwat. 
Islamabad says militants mainly associated with the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan frequently launch attacks from hideouts in neighboring Afghanistan, targeting police and other security forces. 
Islamabad has even blamed Kabul’s Afghan Taliban rulers for facilitating anti-Pakistan militants. Kabul denies the charges. 
Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said this week he would hold direct talks with the rulers in Kabul to take action against Afghanistan-based militant groups.
“My [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] police has lost trust, my people have lost trust, where are you [federal government, army] taking my youth, my people?” Gandapur said as he addressed a ceremony on Wednesday evening.
“I am saying let me send a representative to Afghanistan to talk to them. Afghanistan is our neighbor, we speak the same language, we have a longer than 1,200 km border. Let me talk to them that what is happening in Afghanistan.
“I announce here … I will talk to Afghanistan myself, I will talk to them as a province. I am telling you as the representative of this province, I will send an emissary and arrange a meeting, I will sit with them and talk and Inshallah I will solve this issue through talks.”
Islamabad says it has consistently taken up the issue of cross-border attacks with the Taliban administration. The issue has also led to clashes between the border forces of the two countries on multiple occasions in recent months, including on Sunday when security forces in Pakistan said they had killed eight Afghan Taliban fighters in a border clash following what Islamabad described as “unprovoked firing” on its checkpoints.